An Agonizing Search for Two Boys

By RICK BRAGG,

Published: October 28, 1994

UNION, S.C., Oct. 27—
Susan Smith said she stood in the middle of a dark, isolated road on Tuesday night and screamed, "I love you all" as a carjacker disappeared in the distance with her two children in the back seat. So far, the people of this small textile town in northwestern South Carolina have been unable to pray Mrs. Smith's two little boys home again.

Hundreds of law enforcement officers and volunteers have been searching the highways and deep forests of this rural piece of the state, hoping the carjacker released 14-month-old Alexander and 3-year-old Michael. But as of this evening, investigators still had no solid leads, and the worst crime in recent memory in pastoral, peaceful Union County remained unsolved.

"I pray for him," said Sue Morris, Mrs. Smith's neighbor, of the carjacker who had become the focus of a frantic four-state search. "I pray for God to touch his heart and make him let those children go."

What has appeared to be the real-life manifestation of every parent's nightmare began about 9 P.M. on Tuesday when Mrs. Smith, her two children strapped into car seats in the back, stopped her car at a traffic signal in Monarch Mills, a few miles outside Union, the county seat.

Mrs. Smith said she was looking out the driver's-side window when a man with a gun jerked open the unlocked door on the passenger side of her burgundy 1990 Mazda and said, "Shut up and drive or I'll kill you."

Mrs. Smith, who works for a textile company, told Sheriff's Department investigators that she did not know the man and that he seemed out of breath, as though he had been running or was frightened. The man ordered her to drive northeast for about 10 miles, then told her to stop and get out.

She begged him to let her take the children with her, but the man told her: "I don't have time. I'll take care of them."

She said she watched in shock, standing in the middle of the road, as the man drove away with her children. Later, family members said Mrs. Smith was sick with grief, asking herself how she could have let the man drive away with her sons.

"She just thought, when she got out of the car, that he'd let her have them," said her cousin, Dennis Gregory, a woodworker who lives in Columbia, S.C. "This is a crazy thing. It doesn't happen here. People sleep with their doors open here."

Investigators have almost nothing that would lead them to the children. The crime scene vanished down the dark road.

"Very rarely do you have a crime and not have a crime scene to work," said Union County Sheriff Howard Wells. "I've been in law enforcement 20 years, and I've never had a case where there is so little to work on."

Sheriff Wells did not sound optimistic when asked about what could have been a sighting of the suspect north of Union, across the state line in North Carolina. A convenience store about 100 miles north of Union in Salisbury, N.C., was robbed on Wednesday by a man matching the description of the kidnapper. The robber was reported to have fled in a burgundy car, but none of the witnesses saw any children.

A composite drawing of the carjacker has been circulated in the South and several East Coast states, but it is vague and, according to volunteers who helped look for the children, could be anyone.

Mrs. Smith described the man as black, 20 to 30 years old, 5 feet 9 inches to 6 feet tall, and wearing a dark blue ski cap, blue jeans and a blue jacket.

"Me and my wife plea to you, please return our children to us," said their father, David Smith, hoping that the man would see his appeal on television or read it in a newspaper. Mr. Smith is an assistant manager at a Winn-Dixie grocery store.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith are separated and have filed for divorce, and Sheriff Wells, although he said investigators were approaching the case as a carjacking and kidnapping, has questioned the Smiths about the possibility of a custody dispute. But in a press conference today, he said investigators considered the man described by Mrs. Smith to be their suspect.

Mrs. Smith's stepfather, Bev Russell, said that although the Smiths were separated, "there has never been any disagreement between them over the children." The children live with their mother in a residential neighborhood in Union, a town of about 10,000.

The whole county, which is made up largely of Sumter National Forest, has just 30,000 people. Today, volunteers walked through the changing leaves calling the children's names. At the Sheriff's Office, where deputies and clerks have been working 48 hours without sleep, phones rang continually. Sometimes the caller would have a legitimate tip. Sometimes it would be, as Sheriff Wells put it, "some crackpot."

The department has had calls from psychics offering help in finding the children, and from people offering money for a reward.

So far there is no reward, because Sheriff Wells said he would rather have his investigators work solid leads from people whose motivation is common decency, not money. A reward might cause a flood of dubious leads, investigators said.

On the streets of Union, where the courthouse is still the biggest building in town, cars cruised past the Sheriff's Office with yellow ribbons tied to their antennas. Some overpasses on the major highways had huge ribbons draped over their sides. Some people said the man, if caught, should be hanged immediately. But many others said the suspect was unimportant. "I don't give a damn if we never catch that man," said Lieut. Jeff Lawson of the Sheriff's Department, "just so long as we get those kids back."

Mr. Russell said the two children were just normal, hard-playing, rambunctious little boys who broke a lot of toys. "They're just a great blessing," he said. He said he did not understand why the carjacker kept the children, why he did not just drop them off at a hospital or some other public place.

Others in this town echo him. They understand the man stealing the car, but to keep the children is a meanness, a callousness they just don't understand.

"None of it makes any sense to me," Mr. Russell said.

Photos: Susan Smith, leaving the Sheriff's Office in Union, S.C., on Wednesday, said her two sons were kidnapped on Tuesday by a man who got into her car, threatened her with a gun, ordered her out of the vehicle and drove off with the boys. Investigators said yesterday that leads in the case were sparse. (Photographs by Associated Press); Mrs. Smith's children, Alexander, 14 months, and Michael, 3.